Fire thug caged for torch­ing ex’s home

A lovelorn woman who torched her ex-girl­friend’s flat in re­venge for dump­ing her has been caged for 16 months.

Lisa Gil­mour, 33, was locked up after ad­mit­ting set­ting fire to the home oc­cu­pied by her ex- lover Kara Watt and her new man Peter Hughes.

Pais­ley Sher­iff Court heard track­suit-clad Gil­mour, 33, dragged a shoe rack con­tain­ing work boots and wellies from an ad­ja­cent flat, propped it up against the door, and set alight laces of the shoe wear caus­ing the blaze to ig­nite in the stair­well.

Gil­mour of Ness Av­enue, John­stone, pleaded to guilty to a charge of wil­ful fire-rais­ing at the Lin­wood flat in that she had pre­vi­ously evinced mal­ice and ill will to­wards her for­mer part­ner Ms Watt.

She had de­lib­er­ately set fire to footwear on a shoe rack which was placed against the front door where fire took ef­fect, to the dan­ger of the lives of Kara Watt and also Peter Hughes, both re­sid­ing there on Sep­tem­ber 16.

Pros­e­cu­tor Keri Marshall had told the court po­lice had re­ceived a bar­rage of calls from mo­torists trav­el­ling on the A737 link­ing Lin­wood and John­stone.

She said: “The calls re­lated to a fe­male wear­ing a pink track­suit walk­ing along the grass near to the road.

“Po­lice re­sources were dis­patched and traced the home ad­dress of the ac­cused who was found to be wear­ing a pink track suit.

“A fe­male iden­ti­fy­ing her­self as Lisa Gil­mour had con­tacted po­lice and said she was head­ing to her ex- part­ner’s house to kill her and then was go­ing to kill her­self.

And when wit­ness Mr Hughes was wo­ken by the smoke alarm in their house at around 5am, he went to the front door and opened it and was met with flames at the door.

The pros­e­cu­tor added: “He de­scribed it as a ‘wall of fire.’”

De­fence agent Char­lie McCusker said his client was dis­traught and sui­ci­dal after her part­ner dumped her for a man.

He said: “She con­tacted po­lice to let them know she was go­ing there.

“There is no dis­pute about what hap­pened.

“When she got to the lo­cus she was in­co­her­ent, up­set and cry­ing.

“She then seen trav­el­ling back along the dual car­riage­way at the side of the road.

“She was in­tox­i­cated. She had taken vodka and Val­ium.

“She had been in re­la­tion­ship with Ms Watt for about three years.

“Around six weeks be­fore the in­ci­dent, Ms Watt had met Mr Hughes and she in­di­cated to the ac­cused that she liked him.

“How­ever there never was any in­di­ca­tion of the re­la­tion­ship, but she sus­pected there was, and mat­ters come to a head.”

The court heard Gil­mour now fully ac­cepts her re­la­tion­ship with Ms Watt is com­pletely over.

Sher­iff Frances Mc­Cart­ney, who had ad­journed sen­tenc­ing to call for back­ground re­ports, said the only sen­tence ap­pro­pri­ate given the grav­ity of the crime was one of de­ten­tion.

She handed Gil­mour, who has never served a pe­riod of im­pris­on­ment be­fore, 16 months in jail which will be back dated from the time she was first held on re­mand.